The Launch Code in Action: A Founder’s Journey to 40 New Clients

Read this exclusive excerpt from my book, The Launch Code: Master Founder-Led Sales and Boost Your Startup’s Growth and learn how Simon Neal , Founder & CEO of CampMap used The Launch Code to...

? Add 40 new clients in a single year.

? Expand from three markets to eleven, including the United States.

? Closes deals with at least 50 percent of prospects.

You can listen to Simon share his own story at The Launch Code Unlocked: Live Book Release Event on Tuesday, March 4th.

Register HERE – spots are limited.

Now read Simon's story

Podim is a vibrant tech and startup conference held annually in Maribor, Slovenia, the second city of a small European country adjacent to the Adriatic Sea. I attended virtually in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but in 2023, I was pleased to participate in person.

The Maribox building, where the conference took place, was a short stroll from my hotel. The venue is normally a popular entertainment spot thanks to its multiplex cinemas, arcade games, and bars. This day, however, it was packed with over 1,500 entrepreneurs, investors, and technology experts from Southcentral Europe.?

As I moved through the bustling crowd, I ran into the event organizer, Urban Lapajne, who seemed calm and confident about the conference’s likely success. On the escalator to the first-floor theaters, I chatted with my friend Julien Coustaury, the tall, energetic co-founder of Fil Rouge Capital, the region’s most active venture capital investor. We were all gearing up for two days of presentations, panels, and networking, hoping for glimpses of tech advancements shaping our lives—like the previous year when American engineering and robotics company Boston Dynamics sent a robot dog to interact with conference attendees.

I had three objectives: deliver a keynote, host a sales workshop, and build relationships with potential clients and partners. My speech, titled “Gods vs. Frauds”, explored the differences between legendary tech entrepreneurs and those later exposed as charlatans. Think Steve Jobs versus Elizabeth Holmes. The feedback I’d gotten after my talk lifted my spirits and set the tone for my sales workshop the next morning.

“You Literally Saved My Business.”

As the evening set in, I joined other attendees for dinner and drinks in the rear of the venue that featured a terrace and bar overlooking the Drava River. I was pleasantly surprised to run into my client Simon Neal for the first time since we’d worked together the previous spring.

Simon, a British entrepreneur living in Croatia, founded CampMap, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool that helps campsites share details of their facilities with guests. He’s an intelligent and driven founder, passionate about creating a product that amplifies his love for camping. Like many tech founders, he believed in his product but struggled to sell it to paying customers. To tackle this challenge, Simon signed up for The Launch Code personal mentoring program.?

Curious about his progress since completing the program, I asked Simon for his feedback. His response was simple but impactful.?

“Zoltan,” he told me. “You literally saved my business.”

I was surprised, flattered, and proud to hear how much my framework had helped Simon accelerate CampMap’s revenue growth. As we chatted on the terrace, beers in hand, Simon shared how The Launch Code had changed his perspective on sales, and how he’d implemented its strategies and techniques.?

In September 2022, CampMap faced a critical crossroads. After early success in Croatia, the company had secured funding to expand into Germany but struggled to close new deals. With only three months of operating funds left, Simon dove into The Launch Code, rallying his team and transforming as many employees as possible into salespeople. The alternative—slashing staff to a bare minimum—might have kept the business afloat, but would have derailed its growth potential.

What followed was a nerve-wracking race against time: learning how to sell before the money ran out. Simon encountered the pain of sales firsthand—the frustration of navigating rejection, self-doubt, and intense pressure, all magnified by the trial and error of mastering an unfamiliar skill. It was gut-wrenching but unavoidable.

“We put your structured process into action: this is how you reach out to people with emails, that’s how you generate the content. When you talk to clients, this is how you present your product,” Simon told me. “We completely changed our product offering to include an onboarding fee and three options, and we also updated our website messaging.”?

Gradually, these changes paid off. CampMap began winning new clients and gained the breathing room it so desperately needed.

Today, CampMap’s recurring revenue has doubled year-on-year. The team now closes deals with at least 50 percent of prospects, adding forty new clients in 2023 alone. They’ve expanded from three markets to eleven, including the United States, and are exploring opportunities in Australia and New Zealand to counterbalance Europe’s seasonal downturns during winter.

Still, Simon acknowledges there’s room to grow. “We’re not perfect at sales,” he admits, “but we’re way, way better than we were.”

Sales Hurts, but Not Forever

In the words of iconic 1990’s MTV characters Beavis and Butthead: “You gotta have stuff that sucks to have stuff that’s cool.” The lesson is simple: while no one seeks out pain, it’s often a necessary step toward achieving meaningful goals.

For tech founders, selling can be one of those painful steps. It pushes you beyond your comfort zone, challenging you to embrace a skill that may not come naturally. Whether you’re aiming to build the next unicorn—a company valued at $1 billion or more—create a steadily growing startup, or operate a comfortable lifestyle business, mastering sales is essential to generate predictable revenue and scale.

At its core, sales is about identifying a prospect’s problem and clearly communicating how your solution solves it, motivating them to buy. This connection can only be truly understood through direct involvement in the sales process—a practice known as founder-led sales.

Founder-led sales offers two transformative benefits:?

Customer Connection and Feedback: Engaging directly with your target clients helps you deeply understand their needs, providing invaluable feedback to refine both your pitch and your product. Without this connection, you risk misunderstanding your ideal customers or missing the mark on the problems your solution addresses.

Foundation for Delegation: Founder-led sales equips you to hire and train others effectively. When the time comes to delegate, you’ll have the insights needed to select the right person to lead sales and marketing, and you’ll be able to evaluate their performance confidently.

You might argue that you’d rather focus on building technology and delegate sales to a professional. While delegation is an option for later, in the early stages, it’s not going to work. As the founder, you know your product best and are its most passionate advocate. Like it or not, you are your company’s chief sales officer.?

In rare cases, you may have a co-founder with complementary sales and marketing skills. Even so, as a product-focused founder, you must understand your market and customer needs to ensure your technology aligns with them.

The good news? The pain of sales doesn’t last forever. If you persist and embrace the discomfort, you’ll eventually achieve product-market fit—what Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen describes as “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” Once you reach that milestone, the hardest part will be behind you.

The rest of this chapter will guide you step-by-step to bridge the gap between where you are now and that happy place.